


children of the wild ones

by lady_laverty



Series: hegemon [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Child Soldiers, Gen, Surrogacy, Unethical Experimentation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-30
Updated: 2014-06-30
Packaged: 2018-02-06 20:59:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1872249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_laverty/pseuds/lady_laverty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(I want to keep my baby, her heart tells her sometimes, when she goes for scans under the strict guidance of the scientists and sees the little body that is lying within her womb. She stares at the little person with ears, fingers and toes and half of herself in his DNA during these times because she doesn’t get pictures because <em>technically this baby doesn’t exist.</em>)</p>
            </blockquote>





	children of the wild ones

**Author's Note:**

> Okay I'm still working on my other fics, but this one is only going to be a series I'll get to every so often, between updating my other fics. But enjoy it!

_I am indebted to my father for living,_   
_but to my teacher for living well.  
_ **Alexander the Great**

 

 

The scientists swarm the woman in labour. This was it. The amalgamation of years of research and testing, this child would make them rich and powerful. Too bad for the mother who is shot dead moments after birthing her first and only child, barely twenty years old and desperate for money, for a safe place to stay. If having a place to stay means giving birth to a child, so be it.

( _I want to keep my baby_ , her heart tells her sometimes, when she goes for scans under the strict guidance of the scientists and sees the little body that is lying within her womb. She stares at the little person with ears, fingers and toes and half of herself in his DNA during these times because she doesn’t get pictures because technically this baby _doesn’t exist_.)

Her desperation gets her killed.

John Garrett smiles when a black haired, brown eyed baby is placed in his arms and told to _keep it safe_ , _John, he’s_ your _son_. _You wanted this._

He sure did.

* * *

There is another child, drenched in the blood of SHIELD agents, floating already through the foster system. She is so much older than this child but they are undeniably linked. The blood of innocents drench their hands, albeit unknowingly.

* * *

Grant beams at his father.

John Garrett scowls, points at the obstacle course and the boy is trained well enough to know that it means _go before I make you go_.

 Grant loves his father.

(In the corner of the massive, imposing room there is a pile of bodies. Those deemed worthy enough to be used to train an asset. It didn't mean they were coming back out of the training situation _alive_.)

* * *

Phil Coulson wonders what John Garrett does with his time. He promptly leaves at five and comes to work at nine. No one has that sort of accuracy. He must have a girl or a guy out there that keeps him on his rigid time schedule. He doesn’t go on long ops much anymore. Not after he was fragged in Sarajevo that one time. He hangs about, running ops from the New York base and not anywhere else.

He wonders.

(Years later, he will kick himself for not wondering harder, for not looking, because there was a sick, horrific reason he was always so punctual. It makes him sick to his stomach and he can’t think about it too much otherwise he will vomit and vomit and think himself just as bad as Garrett for _never doing anything_ , for _not realising earlier_.)

* * *

Grant wanders, through the halls of the base that he was born and raised in. He knows he shouldn’t be doing this, his father tells him not to. “ _Don’t leave this room without me, okay, boy? Don’t leave._ ”

But he’s curious and can’t stop himself.

_Curiosity killed the cat_ , his father tells him after he mistakenly gets into the gun closet when he was five years old, _but satisfaction brought it back._ He smiled and patted him on his skinny, pale leg with large tanned hands.

He would be satisfied after finding out what was outside of his room and the training centre. He was five after all; he was old enough to see outside of the rooms that he and his father shared. The only people he saw other than his father were the scientists who came and took his blood sometimes and made him run on the treadmill with this funny mask on his face.

He creeps around corners and sticks to the shadows the lights give off, just like he was taught to do. His clothes whisper and swish around his legs and arms and he freezes as he darts past a room. There are people in the room. Actual _people_. People he hasn’t met before. People who haven’t met him before. He creeps back towards the door and puts his ear to the wall.

_“Phil, man, I know how you feel about Barton but you've got to see how bad bringing a Red Room girl in is!”_ Grant tears his ear away from the wall. It’s his father. He’s talking to man called Phil. He should get out here. His breathing intensifies and he’s starting to panic.

He mustn’t panic. His father taught him that but he _has_ to get back to the rooms before he finds out. He runs, as quietly but as fast as he can, before throwing himself inside.

He should never have left. It’s too scary and there’s too much of a risk. His father’s voice echoes in his head. _Curiosity killed the cat._

* * *

Hydra rises and falls like the sun, blinding.

Phil’s team is luckily kept out of most of the fighting.

* * *

Garrett is Hydra and Phil _should have known_.

* * *

There’s one room in the Providence base that they haven’t checked. It’s written down on the base draw up as a storage room. They leave it be. But he decides after a day of clearing the base and taking it back for SHIELD that he’s going in. A storage room shouldn't be this suspicious.

Of course it’s not a storage room, he realises the moment he opens a door.

It’s a goddamn _bedroom_.

He can’t see anyone in there, so he enters slowly and carefully. There’s a little intake of breath from somewhere in the room (under the bed) and he slows his movements even more. Oh _God_ , don’t let this be a child. Don’t let him find out that Garrett has somehow kept a child under their noses for this long.

He’s creeping closer to the bed and he drops to his knees and peeks under it.

Little eyes stare back at him.

* * *

Grant’s been sitting in the room for a long time. His father hadn’t come back once the fighting got worse. He promised he would but he didn't.

(There’s a little bit of him that is scared, and only in the future, when all this is said and done, will he realise how disgustingly manipulative John Garrett was, despite being his father. Despite being everything and more to him for 9 years. There are days in the future, where he wonders who his mother is, was, before the Hydra scientists killed her for giving birth to John Garrett’s tainted spawn. He will be guilty over his own birth for the rest of his life.)

The door is opening and he’s _terrified_ , watching the shoes move closer to him in the room, his breathing quickening.  The shoes stop in front of his bed and the fear is clawing inside his head, _run, run, run_ , and there’s a face in front of him.

“Hey there, kid.”

He screams.


End file.
